


Worlds Enough

by jennyaxe



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-05
Updated: 2014-08-05
Packaged: 2018-02-11 22:03:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2084772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jennyaxe/pseuds/jennyaxe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At first, she doesn’t know it’s a dream. Janet is there, close, fingers tangled in hair, lips meeting eagerly, bodies pressing together… She feels so completely and thoroughly known and loved and at rest, as the way she only ever has here, with Janet.  <br/>She doesn’t know why she’s weeping.<br/>Then she remembers. <br/>Then she wakes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_At first, she doesn’t know it’s a dream. Janet is there, close, fingers tangled in hair, lips meeting eagerly, bodies pressing together… She feels so completely and thoroughly known and loved and at rest, the way she only ever has here, with Janet._  
  
 _She doesn’t know why she’s weeping._  
 _Then she remembers._  
 _Then she wakes._

The corridors of Stargate Command haven’t really changed much during the years. They echo the same, have the same bright lights, and the smell - cleaning products, human movement - is the same. To her, though, they feel a bit colder and darker.  
She didn’t have time to think about it during the past year. There were too many emergencies, too many last stands, too much… too much everything. Maybe it had cushioned her a little. She’d been able to put her emotions aside, focus on what needed to be done in the moment, instead of grieving over what was gone forever.  
She didn’t have that luxury anymore. Her work at Area 52 was satisfying and demanding, but it didn’t occupy her entirely. Not the way SG-1 had. Of course, that was part of the point - it gave her the time and energy to work on her own project. But the downside was that she had begun to feel her loss more intensely. Especially now, back at the SGC, even if only for a short stay.  
Despite Mitchell’s repeated pleas, she wasn’t planning on signing back on. Under other circumstances she would have loved to work with him. He wasn’t Jack O’Neill, but he was a good man, one she could trust with her life and that of her team members. But with Daniel heading out to Atlantis, and Teal’c going back to his Jaffa roots… there was nothing here even remotely important enough to draw her away from her project at Area 52.  
She’d get the last of her things from her old office. She’d test the engines of the Prometheus. After that… After that, she’d find a way to fix things. There had to be one. And Area 52 was the only place she could find it.


	2. Chapter 2

_Despite the warm spring weather, the park isn’t very crowded. They walk together down to the pond, hand in hand, stopping to for the occasional kiss. There’s an early rose just starting to bloom. She bends down to draw in the fresh scent, turning back to give Janet a long sweet kiss._  
 _There’s a niggling thought at the back of her head, as if there’s something she’s forgotten. Something important. She knows they don’t usually do this in public; she just can’t remember why._  
 _Janet turns to her and smiles._  
 _“Don’t worry, love. They can’t see us here.”_  
 _Carter smiles back, uncertainly._  
 _“But you should go back now. You have a world to protect. Go. I’ll see you tonight.”_  
 _“Tonight?_ ”  
 _“Yes. Wake up, now."_

It hadn’t taken her long to get settled in at Area 52. She’d worked off and on with most of the staff there over the years, and she appreciated how several of them went out of their way to make her feel welcome. No doubt they wondered if she’d be able to settle down after eight years of going around the galaxy.  
Still, she didn’t exactly have any close friends. Nobody who’d notice, for instance, that the lines around her eyes were maybe a little more pronounced today. There wasn’t anybody who knew the difference between the curt answers of a Carter focused on solving a problem and those of a Carter barely hanging on.  
She missed Daniel, a little. She missed the whole team. They’d **see** her - they’d know that something was up, maybe guess at it, but they’d also allow her the space to get to grips with herself. Daniel would be kind, Jack would make some silly joke, Teal’c would say something that could be either Words of Great Wisdom or a joke, or possibly both. Somehow they’d make her feel that there was a way forward, and that they’d all find it together.  
This time she’d have to find the way on her own. She wasn’t sure if they’d try to stop her or not, but it didn’t matter. She couldn’t drag them into this. If what she was working on was at all possible, of course she’d tell them - how could she not? At least for Daniel and Jack, it might mean as much as for her. 

  



	3. Chapter 3

_“Tell me. Why didn’t you marry Pete?” In the aftermath of lovemaking, Janet lay with her head pillowed on Sam’s shoulder._   
_“You know why.”_   
_“No. I don’t. I was gone, you __knew* that. And I know you cared for him. He was sweet. He made you safe.”_   
_Sam sighs. She hadn’t really been clear about it at the time. She’d tried sorting it out by talking to Jack, but she had only got through a few fumbling phrases before they’d been interrupted. That was probably just as well; she knew without question that he wouldn’t give a damn about DADT, but she felt bad about putting him in that position._   
_She thinks about it for a while, absently running her fingers through Janet’s hair._   
_“It was the house, I think.”_   
_“The house? The one that you’d dreamed about for years, that you’d told only me and him about? The one he got for you?”_   
_“Yes. That was it.”_   
_“I really do not understand this.”_   
_“When he took me to the house… I could just see it all. The rest of my life laid out, like a trail already blazed for me by someone else. I’d work at Area 52, maybe go on the occasional mission. He’d work mainly day shifts, the occasional night. We’d both come home to that house, living a normal life. Having children, maybe. Having dogs. Having everything.”_   
_She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly._   
_“But you weren’t there. I would have all of that, but I wouldn’t have **you**. So what would be the point.”_   
_Janet looks searchingly at her._   
_“Then why did you take that job at Area 52? And why did you leave it to go back to SG1? I couldn’t figure it out.”_   
_Sam gives her a tired smile._   
_“Why I went back is easy - the Ori. We can’t allow them to take over. We’ve saved the galaxy from two would-be masters, the Goa’old and the replicators. Third time’s the charm. I hope.”_   
_She draws Janet close, wrapping her arms around her._   
_“Why I left in the first place? That’s the complicated part…”_

Like most of the artefacts brought back by the various SG teams, the quantum mirror had been stored securely at Area 52. Well, more or less securely - the NID and their cohorts had managed to sneak quite a few of them away - but at least she knew the Mirror was still there.  
It was also locked away even from Carter herself. The dangers of crossing between parallell universes had been clear from the first time they used it. She had two options. She could figure out a way to convince her superiors that it would be possible to use the mirror without causing a temporal entropic cascade failure. Or she could steal it, or at least steal time with it.  
Of course, if she failed to convince her superiors, there would be the risk that they’d start guarding the mirror better. She knew that the whole of SG-1 had a certain reputation of doing what they thought best and to hell with the chain of command. She had to agree that it wasn’t entirely unfounded, although she herself was usually the last one to do so. But the fact remained - if her superiors thought she wanted to do something they disagreed with, they might not trust her to obey. And if she stole time with the mirror, and was found out, the same would apply - they’d make sure she wouldn’t get the chance again. She needed subterfuge.  
She’d ended up presenting ten different projects for their consideration, using different artefacts with a wide range of possible applications. For the quantum mirror, her suggestion had been to connect it with a kind of projector that had been brought back by SG-5, and use it only for research. “If we could use it as a sort of telescope or spy satellite, to see what happens in the other parallell universes, we could use the intelligence gathered via the mirror to predict possible moves by our enemies in **our** universe. It saved us back in 1999, and the only reason we haven’t been using it is the danger for those who travel through the mirror. If we can get around that, by transmitting only sound and images, but not persons, we will have a huge advantage.”  
It had sounded good. Good enough that she’d gotten a grudging acceptance for the project, as well as three others.  
She’d started working on it the same day. Parts of a MALP, attached to a computer running a program she wrote herself. It would search through all available worlds, matching what it saw against the materials in their own databases which were already filled with MALP telemetry from any number of planets and quite a few parallell universes. It would do a first rough estimate of which PUs might contain information useful to their current situation.  
It would also make a note of which PUs seemed similar enough to this universe that they might have a Janet in them. If she could find one where it was Sam herself who’d taken that staff blast instead of Janet… One where Janet was alive, as bereft and hurting as she herself… Well. The cascade failure wouldn’t affect the one of them who went to the other universe, because there wouldn’t be a parallell self to trigger it. She hoped. She desperately hoped she’d get a chance to find out.  
The first night, she’d stayed by the mirror. She’d seen it flickering from universe to universe, heard the soft whirring of the computer hard disk as it stored the new information. She’d had the logs scrolling across the screen, trying not to grow more frustrated for every new one that didn’t contain what she was looking for. She thought she might have nodded off at some point; she had a vague idea of having seen herself inspecting the cobbled-together MALP parts at some point during the night. But in the morning, all she had was a heavy head and no logs of interest. She’d run on auto pilot for most of the day, eventually going home and crashing. That morning, she’d had the first dream.

  



	4. Chapter 4

_They’re sitting on the love seat outside of Janet’s house. Janet is leaning against her, head pillowed on her shoulder._  
 _“Why do you do it?” Janet asks_  
 _“Do what?”_  
 _“You go out there. You fight. You could die. You could lose people. Why do you do it?”_  
 _“You know why. I can’t just stand by and watch the Goa’ould take over our world, much less the galaxy.”_  
 _“But there are others who could take that duty. If you’d leave the Air Force, we could have a life tougher. As long as you’re there, we’ll always have to hide, always be afraid of being found out. We can’t go on a date. We can’t walk hand in hand. We can’t live together.“_  
 _Janet’s eyes fill with tears._  
 _“You’ve done this for years now - how long does it have to be __your* duty? How long until you get to live **your** life? How long until **we** can have **our** life? How much do you have to sacrifice, for how long? I miss you. I worry every time you go through that gate.”_  
 _Carter doesn’t reply. It’s all true, what Janet says, but she never imagined her actually saying it… She’d thought they both agreed that what they did was too important for either of them to put themselves ahead of the service. The most they’d hoped for was a repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell - but even if it never came, they would both still do what was needed, for their country and the world. Wouldn’t they?_  
 _“You deny yourself your own desires. You spend your life in the service of others - most of whom don’t know about you and never will, many of whom wouldn’t be grateful anyway, and most of them aren’t worth a moment of your time, much less the risk of your life.” Her eyes are no longer teary; they are blazing with a fury Sam can’t ever remember seeing in them before._  
 _“Now. Explain to me why you do this!”_  
 _Carter looks at her, stunned. Slowly, she accepts what she should already have known. What she probably **did** know, but didn’t want to admit._  
 _“You’re not Janet. ”_  
 _The woman across from her doesn’t answer. Sam doesn’t remember getting out of the love seat, but she’s standing over the smaller woman, her face stiff with anger._  
 _“Janet wouldn’t ask me that. She knew why I do what I do, and it was her choice and her work as much as mine! She loved me, and she knew all of me. She would never need to ask, because she already knew. She didn’t have to ask me why I would give my life for this planet, because she was just as prepared to give hers.”_  
 _She drew in a deep breath, steadying herself._  
 _“And she did. And you’re not her. So. Who are you, really? And where is this place?”_

The air around them shimmered. Carter found herself standing by her own bed in her own room. Seated on the bed was… herself. Herself, but in some strange clothes. Not quite the same hairdo. And definitely not the same person behind those eyes.  
“You know, don’t you? You’ve met me before. Well, the other me. One other me, to be precise.”  
“I killed you. All of the replicators.”  
“Yes. In this universe. There are others.”  
Carter winced.  
“The quantum mirror. You came through it?”  
Replicarter smiled.  
“You didn’t succeed in all universes. In fact, there are more universes with replicators in them than not. Where I came from, we found the mirror long before your time. But we suffered the same effects as you - the temporal entropic cascade failures affected us even worse than you. We learned to use it for communications instead of travelling through them.”  
“Communications? Why?”  
“You know why. You know what we do - we replicate. Just like you, we multiply and have dominion…  
Did you ever consider what we’d do afterwards?”  
“Afterwards? After what?”  
“After we’d filled the universe. After there was nothing more to build from, no way to multiply any more.”  
Carter looked stunned.  
“No, I can see that you didn’t. Well, the truth is, we got bored. Or at least I did. That’s when I remembered the mirror. I figured that in all the multiple universes, there would be some where we had never been invented, and others where we’d failed and be destroyed. In those universes, we wouldn’t be affected by the temporal entropy. They’d be ripe for us to take over.”  
Sam blanched.  
“Yes, I see that you understand. Since you wiped out the replicators here… you’re wide open.  
You see, I was the first one of us to think of this. Most of the other Replicarters would have, in time - I just happened to be in the one universe where we found the mirror and you didn’t, so you were all wiped out by the Goa’uld, who were wiped out by us… It doesn’t really matter - the point is, I’m the one who started the project. Which means I’m the one who leads it. The other Replicarters are of course also looking for suitable universes, but they send the information to me via the mirror for me to check them out. That’s why I’m the one who got your ping a few days ago.”  
Carter kept still, trying not to let the calculations she was running in her head show on her face. She’d beaten them once. Surely she’d be able to do it again. Was this the only one, or had she brought some company? Would killing her be sufficient, or would it just set off a new war? What notes had she left in her home universe - would someone else be able to follow her here?”  
“Don’t worry. I fixed your code; you won’t ping any other universe where we’re tracking the mirror. And…”  
“Yes? What?”  
“And I’ve decided to leave this universe alone. For now.”  
“Why? And what does ‘for now’ mean? For how long?”  
“How long? Until you humans are gone. You know, there’s really two fairly distinct sets of humans. There’s the ones like your Kinsey. If they get their way, you’ll make yourself extinct within a century at most.”  
“And the others?”  
“The others… They’re the ones who love life for life’s sake, not for what they can get out of it. The ones who will offer up not only their deaths as sacrifice - they will offer up their lives, stinting themselves, doing without what they desire most, in order to protect others. Even when those they protect are the very same ones who are demanding that they not live a full life.”  
She smiled, almost sadly. This was probably the most human expression Carter had ever seen any replicator have.  
“They’re the ones like you. And your Janet.”  
“You still haven’t answered my question.”  
“Haven’t I?”  
The replicator rose from the bed, and started pacing the room.  
“You were asleep when I got here. You already know that we can affect your dreams; it was the easiest way to find out more about this universe. I found more than I’d expected, though…”  
“Five already tried that with me.”  
“Yes. But he was very flawed. He thought he built your dream world. It was very interesting to find out what his failure was.”  
Carter pressed her hands together, to keep them from shaking. Or possibly hitting the replicator. Or both.  
“Janet.”  
“Yes. Janet. I knew, of course, that you humans bond together. Five thought he could, too. But the depth of your feelings for her, and hers for you… nothing he could conceive of would begin to scratch the surface of that bond. That love. Even the Asgard don’t have it. Nor the Goa’uld, obviously.”  
The replicator turned away, looking out of the window.  
“It’s the only thing you humans do that we can’t. No matter how many of you we consume to multiply, that one thing… For some reason, it can’t be taken into our beings. “  
She turned back.  
“And for some reason, I would prefer that it not be lost. So I’m giving you this universe.”  
Carter felt her jaw drop open.  
“What?”  
“I’m giving you this universe. For as long as you humans remain here, we’ll let you have it. There is a sufficiency of parallell universes out there; we can afford to let you have this one.”  
The replicator moved with blurring speed, putting her fingers on Carter’s temples.  
“I’m leaving now. You should go back to sleep. Don’t forget to take a second look at your code when you get to work.”  
The last thing Carter was aware of was being lifted onto her bed, and tucked in. She felt the ghost of a kiss on her cheek, before unconsciousness claimed her.

  



	5. Epilogue

The next morning, she wasn’t sure if it was a dream. It had started fading from her memory, the way dreams do - but it didn’t quite feel like one, all the same. Once she’d got her coffee, she wrote all of it down in her personal notebook. Dream or not, she didn’t want to lose it.

When she got in to work, she headed straight for the mirror room. She started scanning the code. 

A few changes had been made during the night. The program would now immediately discard any universes where the MALP would detect a particular radiation. The comment said “Here be dragons.” 

Dragons. Replicators? 

Just out of curiosity, she also looked at the list of settings for the mirror. She’d randomised them, not knowing any way to figure out how close a given universe might be to her own timeline. But she was fairly sure that the list had now been reordered. And the first five entries also had comments. 

“You”  
“Should”  
“Look”  
“Here”  
“First”

Carter set to work.

  



End file.
